


With No Time Left To Say Goodbye

by skullage



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another night, another city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With No Time Left To Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Title from David Whyte's 'Revelation Must Be Terrible'.

A new tour, a new country, one that holds a power that thrums under Harry’s skin. Liam smiles wider, Zayn clings. Louis surfs and gets lost on the train. Niall seems the only one unaffected, his same big smile and big words and guitar slung over his back, throaty laugh chiming in like a separate instrument that harmonises with the city. Harry looks over the water, watches it soak up the sunlight like a sponge, with Niall at his back, calming him. This could be home. Each town, each new city could be the one that Harry falls for.

The ferry slows to a stop and the passengers get off. Niall nudges his hip, easy, tugs him away from the deck.

Harry already knows where his heart lies.

 

~

 

The next signing passes in a few hours of grabby, hysterical fans (even here in Australia, at the edge of the world), and by the end of it night is already falling, days passing easier on the other side of the globe. One more sleep and they lay this city to rest and return home, but Harry feels a buzzing along his skin that tells him he isn’t done here. They head back to the hotel, still pumped from the day and nothing ahead of them. Harry’s almost jumping out of his skin, restless. He paces around the room, stares at the streetlights with longing. Niall watches him from the bed, plucking away at his guitar strings absentmindedly. Beside him lies a notebook, lyrics sprawled across it, dots for tab and slashes written in a language only Niall speaks. He’s humming under his breath, still plucking.

Through the thin motel walls they can hear Louis shouting, and an occasional loud comment from Zayn. Another round of FIFA, probably. They’ll be off for hours, matching score for score with Louis stirring Zayn up until Zayn relents and declares a truce. For a moment Harry thinks of joining them.

“I’m going mad,” he remarks.

“Probably,” Niall teases. “All that crap you put in your hair. Surprised you haven’t lost it.”

Harry shakes his head. “Cooped up,” he explains. “I wanna go out. We’ve only been here three days.” He turns back to the window. Here is bright lights, city centre, a casino that shines like a globe. The lights pull him in different directions. In the distance, the river is a firework of colours, the casino and bridge lit up like a summer storm; the lure is strong.

He turns back to Niall, jerks his head towards the street. “You wanna?” he says.

Niall’s already pulling on his trainers, saying “you won’t get grounded again?” and Harry laughs.

When they pull open the door Niall is grinning. “Never miss a chance to sneak out with Lairy Harry Styles.” They’re out into the corridor almost immediately, giddiness rising in Harry’s chest with each step. He doesn’t miss the warm weight at his side as they scamper off, Niall’s palm pressing into his back, urging him on.

 

~

 

Harry’s secrets well up inside him, inflated and gnarled, unruly like his hair, but here in this city on this cobblestone alley, they could easily spill out and drown him. Niall pushes him further, past doors marked ‘private’ and shutters that close at their approach; there are no witnesses here. Their shoes slap against the pavement and their laughter follows them like a shadow, but when they turn around and stop to catch their breath the laughter is gone and so are the shadows.

Niall’s cheeks are flushed, his breath coming out in puffs of cloud. They stare at each other for a minute, grinning, ruining the silence just by being in it. “You’re mad as a cut snake, Harry,” Niall exclaims, testing the idiom. It sounds alien in his voice, and they burst out laughing, caught up in the syllables and trip of his tongue.

“Blimey!” Harry shouts, accent purposefully distorted.

Niall throws his head back, yells “Cooey!” to the sky, the pale column of his throat caught in the light as his chest expands and drops. They lean against the wall, breathless.

Harry stares back down the alley. “Think we lost them?”

Niall shakes his head. “No one was after us, you nutter. You just took off running.” His eyes are a pale shade of blue, his fingers pulling numbly at his coat as the cold starts to settle in again. Harry can feel his nose sting, raw and freezing when he cups his hands around his mouth.

It takes a moment to settle in. He took off running, and Niall followed him. Without thought or effort, like Harry was the risk worth taking.

His tongue clicks against his teeth; he can feel it working while Niall looks at him, his secrets ready to crawl out of his gums. It would be so easy, in this moment, to close the distance between them, reality too concrete a thing to stop Harry from pulling Niall toward him, and out here in this foreign country, no one would know.

The silence stretches too long. Niall licks his lips. “What,” he asks in a voice that echoes through the city and wakes Harry up.

“Nothing,” he replies, too quickly. “I wanna--”

The solid force of the river flows behind them, and unconsciously Harry turns to face it. Something reckless. They’re in a place without a purpose, they could just as easily be lost and purposeless. Niall stirs, stands beside him and their shoulders brush, friction and warmth.

“Harold, you’re a terrible influence,” Niall admonishes.

He could do it, now, before he loses his nerve. Jump in, close the distance. The river rushing and the both of them swept away. Restlessness floods his veins, a natural opiate. He could be bigger than himself for one, glorious moment.

The wind cuts through the alleyway, through Harry’s layers. He feels the warmth beside him recede, a tug on his arm. Niall leads him away from the water, from the lights, and Harry lets himself be taken, doesn’t look back.

 

~

 

In the late hours of the morning Harry finds himself up and too awake to find comfort in his bed. The adrenaline from the day has worn off and in its place resides an emptiness, a void. Niall fell asleep as soon as they got back, but Harry can still hear the strum of his guitar in the silence, playing out over the city, and the echo of waves breaking across English beaches. Foreign birds call out to each other, parroting morning speeches that sound like their next new hit, Liam’s voice strong over the instrumental, Zayn’s soft crooning. The notebook beside him lies open to a blank page. The last few entries are in Niall's handwriting and Harry re-reads them, feels the tab ringing through his chest, feels the calluses on Niall's running over his skin and the shivers that follow.

The sun starts to break over the water and the songbirds are still singing. Soon they'll be leaving this place, setting out for a new city and a new area code and Harry's thoughts of this one, if they linger through the jetlag, will be anachronistic. Most likely, they won't survive the day. New feelings of homesickness and loneliness will replace the old ones: only the place he longs for will stay the same.

 

~

 

Niall nudges him several hours later, hand warm on Harry's bare shoulder, face too close where he leans down. Harry starts awake from a dream saturated in colour and isolation.

"'M not dreamin'," he mumbles, feels Niall laugh in his ear. He reaches out instinctively to bat Niall away but instead ends up with his hands clenched around the collar of his shirt; the favourite red polo that brings out the light in his skin.

Niall smiles softly when Harry's eyes focus on him through the blinding sunlight. The grogginess of fading sleep leaves Harry's limbs heavy and numb. Time moves at a glacial pace as he stares up, caught in the moment. The frantic energy of the night before is gone, but the yearning remains.

"Good morning," he croaks. His hands are still in Niall's shirt.

"Morning," Niall drawls. He reaches over and musses a hand through Harry's hair. "Gonna sleep all day?"

Harry relaxes back into the bed, letting his hands fall. "Got coffee?" he asks, too sleepy to be hopeful. Nonetheless, Niall reaches behind himself to the nightstand and hands over a jumbo takeout mug, still scolding when Harry takes it, grinning as big as he can.

"Three shots of hazelnut," Niall tells him. Relief washes through Harry's system like a wave, a hit of caffeine. Relief and something else. Niall looks at him curiously, eyes glittering with laughter and light. Harry scooches over on the bed to make room and Niall takes the hint, mattress dipping with his weight.

"Sugar?"

"Thought you were sweet enough," Niall jokes. Despite the lightness in his tone, Harry's heart does a flip in his chest. A mixture of emotions wells up in his throat: sleep-addled disappointment at having no sugar to drown in his coffee, and a confused swell of pride and rush at the compliment. Almost unconsciously, Niall leans into him until they're sitting shoulder to shoulder.

Harry doesn't know what to say. Before the silence builds up, Niall reaches into his pocket and dumps a handful of sugar packets on Harry's bedspread. The immediate gratitude must show on his face because Niall laughs again, a hearty, full laugh that warms Harry up as much as the first sip of piping-hot steamed latte.

He rips open a few packets with his teeth and pours them in with a delicate balancing act between the bed, the lid, the sugar packets, and his two hands that Niall watches with the same amusement he always adopts in Harry's presence.

"This how you get all the boys?" he murmurs with a quick glance back at Niall.

Niall offers a small smile. "Not interested in all the boys," he says, which admittedly is pretty smooth. He adds, "Gonna get diabetes, you keep that up," to which Harry replies, "Worth it." He chucks a sugar packet at Niall's head.

"What time's it, anyway?" The first sip goes down hot and sweet.

Niall stretches out on the bed. "Eight thirty."

"I should be pissed at you for waking me up so early, but I think this makes up for it." He raises his coffee in a mock salute.

"The coffee?" Niall asks, innocently enough.

Harry grins. "Yeah, the coffee." He feels a familiar elation well up in him, the thrill and coyness to their words, roles they've slipped into unconsciously, and beneath that a power play. He pointedly glances at where they're pressed together. He can feel Niall's body heat and the scent of breakfast still lingering on his clothes makes Harry hungry, but not for food. The yearning hits him like a glove slap, and suddenly the coffee doesn't taste so sweet.

Somewhere outside of himself he self-consciously wonders how obvious he is, but Niall's body language reassures him that it doesn't make Niall want him any less. Harry's getting hard just thinking about it.

When he meets Niall's eye again, Niall is staring at his lips, and Harry remembers that he's shirtless, and that Niall is lying in his bed. In that moment, the world doesn't seem so big. He can feel Niall's gaze, openly curious and with a hint of something deeper that Harry could fall into if he looks too hard. This is how he's been living for months: stuck on a loop somewhere between Niall's distance and his proximity, but always in relation to Niall. Few things in his life have seemed quite as important as that since the first time Harry noticed the gravity pull. It's working, now. He's close enough to reach out and touch if he wants to, and he wants to.

So he does.

He turns his body, leans over to place his palm on Niall's chest, is surprised when he feels a heartbeat, unsteady but unbroken.

"Hey," he murmurs. His own pulse races. A tidal wave crashes in his eardrums; his skin tingles with an electricity akin to the buzz of an amp.

Niall's grin slips slightly before he whispers "hey," and closes the distance. His lips taste of vanilla and maple syrup and Harry is glad for the coffee that washed away his morning breath. Niall reaches over and cups his hand around Harry's neck, drawing him in. The kiss lingers for several minutes as they learn each other's mouths, something soft enough for Harry's battered heart to withstand.

When they break apart they stay close, noses brushing, breathing each other in.

"You waited a long time, I was afraid you were never gonna make a move." Niall's tone is full of a laughter that reaches his eyes, soft and warm like his hands, like the way he sings and laughs and lives.

"Same," Harry sighs, his mouth dry.

"Just tell me something." Niall settles back in the bed, eyes still trained on Harry's face, almost scrutinising. "What was all that about last night?"

Harry drags the coffee back up to his lips, swallows a scorching, bitter mouthful. He feels a pang of longing to kiss Niall again and for a very long time, to get that taste of sweetness back. He looks at Niall, shakes his head. "I dunno, I just. Needed something. Felt like doing something. Y'know, crazy."

Niall nods. The humour in his eyes is gone, replaced with something too close to understanding for Harry to dwell on. "Just promise me, yeah," Niall starts, "don't do anything stupid when I'm not around."

He gives a small smile that Harry mimics.

"You're always gonna be around," he says, and it sounds sincere to him, feels sincere. He believes it.


End file.
